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Earlier in this series, I argued that punishment, prisons, and criminal law are inherently unjust, and that a purely restitution-focused system of tort law would be a suitable replacement. Even those who end up agreeing may still wonder what practical impact this theoretical framework has on how we actually think about law and politics in the real world. Addressing that question will be the focus of this final installment. A Shift in Focus The first answer is that keeping goals like prison abolition in mind structures the way we evaluate other policies and arguments. For instance, libertarian opposition to gun control and the drug war becomes even more important when we remember...

The last three posts of this series have been focused on the injustice of punishment and criminal law, and the justice of a tort-based pure restitution system. Even if punishment itself were legitimate, however, we would still have reason to reject the main form of punishment that exists today. Prisons– especially as they exist in the United States– can be attacked from several angles. For instance, their inherent tendency towards abuse, how they feed recidivism (freed prisoners’ relapse into criminal behavior), or the way they break up families. There are also the economic incentives they provide, both to prison guard unions and...

In the previous couple of posts of this series, I argued that the practice of punishment and the institution of criminal law are inherently unjust. As an alternative, I proposed that we replaced them with a purely civil system, with no law but tort law. All cases would then be cases of dispute resolution, where aggressors are not punished, but instead forced to pay restitution to their victims. Here, I’ll provide some brief responses to some of the most common criticisms of this idea. Insufficient Deterrence One problem that is often raised against an exclusively tort-based legal system is that it...

In the first post of this series, I gave some reasons why libertarians ought to reject the practice of punishment. As an alternative, I suggested that the only proper role of law is dispute resolution, and that law’s violence can only be used in either direct defense or the collection of restitution. In effect, this eliminates criminal law, leaving only civil law in its place. In what follows, I’ll try to bolster that conclusion by briefly showing why libertarians ought to oppose criminal law, beyond just the illegitimacy of punishment. Victim-Centric vs. Sovereign-Centric Views of Law Libertarians (rightly) spend a lot...

As the pain, suffering, and sheer cost incurred by the criminal justice system in America spirals further and further out of control, more and more people have come to push for reform. Even Texas Governor Rick Perry, who once proudly declared to have never struggled with issues like the death penalty, has begun to advocatereducing the number of prisons. However, what we need, now more than ever, is something much more radical than mere reform to the criminal justice system: we need abolition. We must abolish the institutions of criminal law and punishment, including the system of slavery we call...

The Obama administration recently announced a plan to give $263 million to local law enforcement,which is somewhat concerning considering how this intrusion of the federal government may affect local governments. There may be a silver lining in this plan as $75 million will go to providing officers with body cameras. This is interesting to say the least as many people have been calling for this move to make the police more accountable. Yet while body cameras may prove to be a good tool to keep the police accountable, what the rest of this money will go to is not quite...

For years now we’ve heard about the rising costs of college tuition, the student debt problem, and how minimum wage jobs don’t pay enough. Too many people are caught in the same Catch-22: unable to pay for more schooling with their current income and unable to earn more money without more schooling. Some blame greedy banks and greedy schools, libertarians blame government loans, and certainly there is more than one contributing factor to the problem. Unfortunately, not enough people talk about how our K-12 system deserves partial blame. Why do we spend twelve years and tens of thousands of public...

As protests in Ferguson and elsewhere have brought police militarization to the forefront of public debate, some voices suggest that reigning in police militarization requires stricter gun control laws. For example, Matthew Yglesias argues at Vox that “when civilians are well-armed, police have to be as well.” Yglesias claims, “The officer always has to worry that if he doesn’t reach for and use his own gun, the suspect will.” He further contends that the disproportionate rate at which blacks are shot by police means “Young black men pay the price for gun rights.” While “officer safety” is the common refrain...

On December 7, 1972, Apollo 17 would make its way back from the last manned mission to the Moon. From a distance of 45,000 kilometers (28,000 miles), the crew of that flight decided to take a snapshot of our lovely home, Earth. The photo would be called “The Blue Marble” and it would be one of the few photos we have that encapsulates our planet in its intrinsic glory. The image quickly became iconic, representing the frailty of humanity’s propensity towards division. It simply depicted Earth and challenged us to think differently about our role in it. The ecological harm...

Since the first implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing, tens of thousands of citizens have been stripped of their freedom for decades at a time. Though most regard incarcerated peoples as little more than statistics in a government database, each individual who loses 5, 10, 20 or more years of their life for a crime which, in many instances, is non-violent, falsely alleged, or a first time offense, represents a horrific perversion of justice. Let’s look at some victims of mandatory minimums: Algernon Lundy, who maintains his innocence, was given a mandatory sentence of life in prison on crack conspiracy charges....